Sunday, November 29, 2009

getting ready: New Order Get Ready sessions

In August 1993 (at the Reading Festival) New Order played their final gig of the Republic tour, and disappeared. With Bernard saying to Hooky that if they never see each other again it would be a good day, nobody expected the band to work together ever again. Each had their own side projects, some more successful than others (though one wished The Other Two saw the same sort of success Hooky had with Monaco, and Bernard with Electronic), and each member was moving on with their lives.

Then the offers to reform for the UK festival circuit became too big to ignore. With late, loved manager Rob Gretton convening the members in January 1998, they finally agreed to give it another go after realizing the differences they had with each other had faded as the years had passed. With no firm committment other than a series of gigs and a "let's see how it goes" attitude, it was of great interest to learn in 1999 that the band was writing and recording a comeback album.

The first fruit of this renewed partnership was the lone track "Brutal", released in 2000 on the soundtrack to the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle The Beach. Part of these sessions were devoted to other new material, though, with at least (what became) "60 MPH" and "Turn My Way" seeing primitive airings.

Then they joined up with producer Steve Osborne and recorded what would become the LP Get Ready, and some B-sides to go with it. Periodically, tracks from these sessions would wind their way to the record company, with some (watermarked) listening copies making their way out of the studio into the public. The LP eventually saw release in fall 2001, however, pre-mastering copies did exist in the wild and the differences - not only in the mastering, but some of the recordings themselves - are striking.

Featured today is the earliest-known leak of the Get Ready sessions. Dating from at least early 2001 (if not earlier), these tracks are all pre-mastering and in virtually all cases longer than the final released variants. It's almost as if Warners/London went to producer Osborne after these and said "OK Steve, tighten them up and then let's talk!". While nothing would be considered "shocking" per-se, at the very least the tracks are different enough (different recordings, different synth lines, different vocals, etc) to be very interesting in their own right, and IMHO the album - as featured in the configuration presented here, which was the same configuration on the Warners/London CD leak - would have been even better than what eventually was released. You know, no "Rock The Shack" here, etc. The final LP was pretty good - if this, however, was instead released as the resulting LP, it'd have really been spectacular.

So enjoy! These are presented basically warts-and-all, pre-mastering. It's not undergone any mastering compression as the final LP did, and it's not been EQ'ed properly. Maybe if you're all nice enough I'll put out there my own release-ready mastering of these tracks, which I've done for myself, as it shits all over the version presented today. For posterity's sake however I've chosen to initially present these as they were given to (or leaked from) the label.

As a special bonus, I've also included tracks for a companion CD that I've accumulated over the years, tracks - for the most part unreleased - which mark various 1998-2001 recording ideas and, most curiously, the theme from Mission Impossible which they recorded in 1999 for the Tom Cruise movie. Alas it was never used and most people don't even know the band had attempted it! Also in the companion set is a pre-Billy Corgan version of "Turn My Way" for all the haters who disliked the album version because of Billy's presence on it... (which I don't understand, because IMHO "Turn My Way" is the best track on the LP!)

All presented as lossless FLAC - for most of this material, the first time ever anywhere, at least non-MP3!

free: No news on the anthology. Strangely had I put together the next batch of the anthology prior to this post, my pickings from this era would be different. Assembling this has allowed me the chance to give a critical listening to 99-01 NO that I've not done in years, and it's caused me to reevaluate some longtime thoughts I've had about this era...

Okay thanks for the update.Have been listening to parts 1 & 2 a lot!They are excellent.I look forward to sometime soon hearing part 3.Maybe 2010 for both parts i imagine?As you stae 99 to 01 needs a careful picking over, something not to be rushed...Many thanks again for all the New Order posts, they are much appreciated.Also I have been collecting all the downoloads done by £50, which are quite simply stunning.Puts the labels to shame!!Keep up the excellent blogging.Best Wishes,Mr C.

Wow, this is great stuff. Can't thank you enough. If Mediafire is not working well why not set up a donations function on the site so an alternate host could be used? With super rare NO music like this and the Run 2 remixes on offer I'd gladly pay up. Just a thought.

I too can't wait to hear this. I was only able to open up RARs parts 1 and 2; the rest would not open due to the corrupt part 3 (the remaining files would not open because of that error). If anyone could repost all of these tracks (perhaps through Megaupload, Rapidshare, or elsewhere?) it would be extremely appreciated.

Perhaps each song needs to be its own independent file, rather than a component of a larger 9-part collection that must be uncompressed as a whole to work?

Analog Loyalist, I too (like Bobinot) be happy to donate to help defray any costs to host this music elsewhere, just to be able to hear it (and ensure other fans can as well. These songs are among the Holy Grails of N.O. music, and they need to be heard.

Working on uploading the batch to megaupload. Watch this space... And thanks everyone for the offers so far - at this point I hope they're not necessary as I don't want to take a penny for what I'm doing.

Thank you very much. I had to download all of the various slowjam attempts. Interestingly, the zipfile claimed the correct CRC checksum should have been 0ac6d6d9, the .rar set claimed it should be DD666939 and the .flac on it's own summed to bde55757 in the end. No idea which of any of those are corrupted :)

Hi thanks for what you do here,me too i keep getting a corrupted slow jam file even after you uploaded the rar for the two files.I hope you can fix everything at all just to complete the PreMix.have you a relationship with a New Order Member? :-)How can you get such those goodies?anyway just better for all of us, NO fansThanksByeFab from Italy

The PIT

A place in which I occasionally post my favorite LPs, EPs, songs, what-have-you. No particular schedule, just when the mood strikes. What will you find here? Excellent, genre-setting (or busting) music. No crap. Promise. Like the stuff? Buy it. Support the scene, keep the kids in line, delete after 24 hours, etc. For evaluation purposes only. The files will explode into a bloody mess 24 hours after you listen to them. You don't want mp3 shrapnel inside your PC do you?